President, Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry has strongly criticised the OGRA's decision of increasing petroleum prices by 9 to 13 percent and stressed that the price increase must be withdrawn immediately.
The increase in petroleum prices would add to the rising inflation and the cost of industrial production that was already under pressure because of higher electricity and gas charges would suffer immensely, he said.
Talking to reporters, he said the only beneficiaries are Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) whose profit margins would increase by making lives of the masses miserable. This is being done at the cost of business, trade and the people. He feared that not only the transportation cost of goods would increase but fares of public transport would also increase manifold. The increase is detrimental for business and industry as production price would go up and exports would suffer badly.
The petroleum prices were being increased every month to add to the worries of the people. Power is not available and industry is hard pressed to use oil to run generators during prolonged electricity loadshedding.
The president SCCI further said that if the situation continues in the near future then all industries would close down and millions of people would lose their jobs. Mustafa said that the government should extend its support to the industry rather than increasing petroleum prices every month. He demanded of the government to immediately withdraw increase in the prices of petroleum products to provide relief to the people.
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